About companions interaction, it seems like every time you finish some big quest (and there are many of those in bg2) all the companions get triggered and start talking to me one after the other. As I said, no mods this time around so I don't think it's the problem
Would those happen to be reputation comments? Or are they starting whole conversations? I'm playing classic (not EE) and I haven't noticed companions suddenly starting conversations after quests. But they do (quite annoyingly) often remind me how they feel about the current party reputation. It's triggered after each reputation change, I believe, as well as from time to time randomly.